


no telling our shapes apart

by heliantheae



Series: i think it's called my destiny that i am changing [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ba Sing Se, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-12 18:34:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28764891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heliantheae/pseuds/heliantheae
Summary: Zuko accidentally adopts Smellerbee and Longshot.
Series: i think it's called my destiny that i am changing [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2108493
Comments: 7
Kudos: 106





	no telling our shapes apart

**Author's Note:**

> title from the killing season by lizzie no

Zuko slips out the door of the tenement building he and Uncle reside in, heading for the nearest market. It’s drizzling, a welcome relief compared to the baking heat of the last weeks. He makes it three steps from the door before something splatters against the left side of his face. He turns, one hand reaching for a baton that isn’t there, to find two familiar-looking children. The shorter of the two hefts another palmful of mud. 

“Jet’s dead,” says Smellerbee-the-perfectly-nice-young-lady-thank-you-very-much-Mushi, and she throws the mud. It hits his chest. 

Zuko looks at her, then at the one he thinks is called Longshot. “Are you reporting a crime?” he hazards. 

Smellerbee looks even angrier. Probably not, then. “He died on the Wall,” she spits. “And it’s your fault!”

More mud. Zuko isn’t grateful for the rain anymore. He raises his hands to protect his face. “My fault?”

“If you’d just listened to him when we got to the city—” she starts to say, but Longshot rests a calming hand on her shoulder. She takes a deep breath. “You shouldn’t have refused him. He would have left you alone if you’d just listened.”

“He wanted me to join your little gang,” Zuko points out. “That doesn’t exactly sound like leaving me alone.”

Smellerbee stomps her foot. “Yes, but he wouldn’t have tried to convince the guards you were a firebender, and you wouldn’t have gotten in that fight, and they wouldn’t have sent him to the Wall!” 

“They sent him to the Wall for that?” Zuko asks. 

“Aren’t you listening?”

He held up his hands. “I am, I am. I didn’t think he was old enough to be drafted since they let him into the city without forcing him to enlist.”

“It turns out fifteen is close enough to sixteen if you’re a troublemaker,” Smellerbee says bitterly. “It’s not as if us refugees ever have proper papers, is it?”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” says Zuko, not sorry at all. “I still don’t know why you’re throwing mud at me.”

“Because it’s your fault he’s dead!” 

“It’s whoever killed Jet’s fault that he’s dead,” Zuko corrects. “Or, hypothetically, the Fire Nation’s, for attacking, or the Earth Kingdom’s, for drafting him. Before that, though, he made his own decisions.” 

“Hypothetically,” Smellerbee growls. “That’s another thing! Everyone here, living their stupid little lives like the Fire Nation isn’t—”

Longshot claps a hand over her mouth.

“There’s no war in Ba Sing Se,” Zuko says. “I’m sorry about your friend. He wasn’t a good person, and he tried to get Uncle and I killed, but I know he meant something to you.”

The look on Longshot’s face suggests Smellerbee is trying to bite him. 

“Go,” says Zuko. “Ba Sing Se is a city of second chances. Don’t waste it.”

“Haven’t got anywhere to go,” Longshot tells him, voice higher than Zuko had been expecting. Spirits, they really are both young.

“No one wants to hire refugees, especially not children,” Smellerbee says, successfully freeing herself from Longshot’s grasp at last. “Everyone says there aren’t enough jobs for people really from Ba Sing Se, let alone—” 

Longshot covers her mouth again, blinking slowly at Zuko. Zuko doesn’t have to imagine what kind of language Smellerbee had been about to repeat. He’s plenty familiar with the anti-refugee rhetoric prevalent in the city from all the times he’s had it thrown in his face. 

“Fine,” says Zuko. “But no more trouble. No more talk about firebenders, the Fire Nation, rebellion, or anything. You’re not Freedom Fighters here.”

Smellerbee looks like she wants to protest, but Longshot nods solemnly. 

“Come upstairs,” Zuko says. “I was about to go to the market. I’m going to need more money than I have on me if I’m shopping for four. Where are your things?”

Silence, this time from both of them.

“You don’t have things,” Zuko sighs. “Alright. Uncle is working, but I’m off until tonight. Follow me.”

Obediently, they troop up four flights of steps to the rooms Zuko shares with Uncle. There’s a tiny kitchen, an even smaller water closet, and two bedrooms proportioned more like closets. Zuko pauses to scrub as much of the mud off his clothes and skin as possible. Then he moves his things out of his bedroom and into the kitchen. There’s room for a bedroll by the stove, and the area will be downright roomy as long as he only sleeps on his side. 

“What?” he snaps because both Smellerbee and Longshot are staring at him. 

“I thought you’d live somewhere nicer,” says Smellerbee.

Zuko stares at her. 

“No offense,” she adds. “You just seem kind of fancy.”

Longshot nods in agreement. 

When he’s no longer speechless at the audacity the girl has, he grinds out, “it’s a tenement building. We’re refugees. I don’t know what you were expecting.”

“Gold leaf. Maybe some marble,” Smellerbee wrinkles her nose. “Plumbing.”

“I should have left you in the gutter.”

“I think we’ll be friends,” she says brightly. 

Zuko takes them to the market. He buys them spare clothes, twice as much rice as he had been planning on getting, tofu, lychee nuts for Uncle, a ginger root, and cabbage from the merciless cabbage merchant that sets up a stall armored like a tank three days a week. He gets some sort of meat jerky, resolutely avoiding thinking about elephant rats while he haggles with the shopkeeper.

“Thanks,” says Smellerbee when he hands over some of the jerky.

Longshot hardly pauses to nod, falling over the meat like he hasn’t eaten in days. He might not have. Zuko feels a little bad about Jet for the first time since meeting the other boy. On the one hand, the younger children had been counting on him for support, and he’d gone and gotten himself drafted, then killed. He shouldn’t have done that.

On the other, dying at the hands of a firebender is a horrible way to go. Having nearly done so himself, Zuko can say that much with certainty. And Jet had only been fifteen. Aided by all of the clarity a single year can bring, Zuko decides that fifteen-year-olds are biologically incapable of considering the consequences of their actions. So, it wasn’t necessarily Jet’s fault, per se, that Zuko was responsible for Smellerbee and Longshot now. Mind made up, he nods to himself.

(Were Uncle here and able to read thoughts, he would be pinching the bridge of his nose. There’s no proverb in existence capable of standing up to a teenager’s logic, particularly Zuko’s peculiar brand. Fortunately for Uncle and his odds of developing a headache, he's on break and having his last relaxing cup of jasmine tea for the foreseeable future. He's doesn't know what he's going to find when he comes home. Ignorance really is bliss. )

“You two are going to help me with laundry,” Zuko says warningly. He hates laundry. He's not doing it for four people instead of two, and he's not letting Uncle take over a chore that aggravates his arthritis. 

“It’s raining,” says Smellerbee. 

“And?”

“That’s basically laundry.”

Zuko looks skyward. The sun is hidden behind the clouds, but that doesn’t stop him from asking Agni _why._


End file.
